OpenCivics Monthly Report / February 2025
A Monthly Snapshot of Network Activities & Updates
Every month, we take a moment to gather what we’ve learned, share opportunities for participation, and celebrate our shared progress in building a more vital, participatory and resilient future.
To get more involved, become a member and attend our bi-weekly General Assemblies.
Our upcoming General Assemblies will take place March 15th at 9am PST and April 1st at 5pm PST. Meetings for the MetaGovernance Alliance will take place March 11th at 9am PST and Open Protocol Library on March 25th at 5pm PST respectively. Check out the OpenCivics public calendar for the latest events.
In the future, we may restrict these reports to Consortium members and patrons. If you appreciate the content here, consider becoming a Citizen, Contributor, or Patron to ensure you’ll keep receiving these resource-dense posts.
Here’s your OpenCivics Monthly Report for February 2025.
What’s Inside:
🤓 Nerd Out With Us
🌐 Network Activities
📢 Member Spotlight
⚡️ Member Updates
🔍 Network Updates
🤓 Nerd Out With Us
Read
Fractal Software for Fractal Futures: The Notion Case: This article delves into how Notion's flexible, modular design exemplifies fractal software principles, enabling users to create scalable and self-similar structures that mirror complex thought processes and collaborative workflows.
Survey on Methodology for Onchain Ecosystem Funding and Impact Assessment: This comprehensive survey examines various methodologies for funding on-chain ecosystems.
From Liminal to Landed: r3.0 Shifts into Place-Sourced Resilience & Regeneration: This article discusses r3.0's transition in 2024 from a decade-long focus on organizational accountability to a new emphasis on place-based resilience and regeneration.
Discourse Graphs for Civic Knowledge Commons: This proposal explores how decentralized discourse graphs can enhance collective sensemaking by enabling communities to map and synthesize knowledge collaboratively.
Assembly Theory x Onchain Capital Allocation - A powerful approach to Allo design space exploration: This post examines the application of Assembly Theory to on-chain capital allocation, proposing a systematic exploration of funding infrastructure by treating it as a modular system, fostering innovation through the combination of simpler components into complex, effective solutions.
The Collective Intelligence Project White Paper: This white paper introduces the Collective Intelligence Project, an initiative focused on developing new governance models for transformative technologies by enhancing collective decision-making processes.
Solidarity Networks & Emergency Survival: Created by A Beautiful Resistance, this guide provides a conceptual and practical overview of solidarity networks and their role in community resilience.
Bioregional Flow Funding Opens New Grassroots Possibilities: The article "Bioregional Flow Funding Opens New Grassroots Possibilities" discusses a decentralized funding model that empowers local communities by entrusting financial decision-making to those most familiar with their ecosystems.
Planetary Civics Inquiry: The Planetary Civics Inquiry (PCI) is an alliance of researchers, educators, policymakers, designers, and practitioners committed to transforming the structures and processes that shape how we govern our interconnected planet.
Watch
ActInf GuestStream 070.1 ~ Jerry Michalski: "Practical Collective Sensemaking": In this session, Jerry Michalski discusses methods to enhance group understanding and decision-making processes.
Towards A Planetary Federation Of Bioregions: This video explores the concept of a federated commons architectures for regenerative and resilient bioregional networks.
How we're disrupting grantmaking - The Wellbeing Protocol: This presentation introduces the Wellbeing Protocol, an approach aimed at transforming traditional grantmaking by prioritizing holistic well-being metrics.
Capitalism: In-depth: A comprehensive analysis of capitalism, this video delves into its historical development, core principles, and the multifaceted impacts on global societies and economies.
Accidental Anarchist - What is the Rojava Revolution?: This documentary examines the Rojava Revolution, highlighting its anarchist principles and the establishment of a self-governed region based on direct democracy and gender equality.
Good Enough Ancestor (Trailer): The trailer for "Good Enough Ancestor" introduces a feature film focused on Audrey Tang, Taiwanese Minister of Digital Affairs and Movement Leader, and her legacy as an innovator in participatory democracy.
A Narrative Strategy for the Earth Regeneration Fund: A Narrative Strategy for the Earth Regeneration Fund presents a comprehensive approach to storytelling and communication strategies aimed at advancing the objectives of the Earth Regeneration Fund.
Planetary Civic Inquiry Launch Recordings: Watch the launch of Dark Matter Lab’s new 10x100 day inquiry into the future of civics in the context of our planetary commons.
🌐 Network Activities
Network Activities are the connective tissue of OpenCivics, designed to align, coordinate, and empower civic innovators, organizers, and patrons in their autonomous but coordinated pursuit of a more vital, resilient, and participatory civilization.
Below, you’ll find an overview of upcoming key activities that you can participate in.
Gatherings
CosmoLocal.space: A residency and pop-up marketplace in Amsterdam for builders, creatives, and researchers dedicated to fostering cosmo-localism design through immersive experimentation. Dates:
Opening Weekend: April 25–27, 2025
Residency #1: April 28 – May 8, 2025
Open Market #1: May 9–12, 2025
Residency #2: May 19 – June 2, 2025
Open Market #2: June 3–5, 2025
EthBerlin Popup Market: June 12, 2025
Intro to Participatory Action Research (PAR): A Primer for Governance Researchers: A MetaGov seminar discussing the principles and possibilities of participatory action research (PAR) through several NYC case studies. Date: March 19, 2025, 16:00–17:00 UTC.
Learnings from COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs): A MetaGov Seminar discussing the creation of community-owned futures for open access books by scaling small and co-designing governance. Date: March 26, 2025, 16:00–17:00 UTC.
Commons Hub Winter Co-Living: An initiative by Commons Hub offering a winter co-living experience centered around community and collaboration. Dates: January 2 – April 21, 2025.
Hack The Hub: An upcoming event by Commons Hub aimed at collaborative problem-solving and innovation. Dates: April 7–21, 2025.
Collaborative Finance Gathering: The third annual gathering focused on exploring collaborative finance models and solidarity economy practices. Dates: June 16–20, 2025.
Ipe City: A pop-up innovation city in Brazil dedicated to participatory experimenting with Network Societies and on-chain communities. Dates: April 22 – May 22, 2025.
Funding The Commons SF @ Internet Archive: Infrastructures of Resilience: The 12th edition of Funding the Commons confronts the future of AI, Web3, and digital public goods as contested spaces requiring intervention, governance, and resilient alternatives. Dates: March 15–16, 2025.
Grants
Community Placemaking Grants: Offers grants to support community-driven third spaces for working class and marginalized communities.
Civic Innovation Challenge: National Science Foundation’s annual competition for civic innovation funding.
Octant Epoch 7 - Climate Round: Octant, collaborating with Climate Coordination Network and ReFi DAO, are now focusing on climate-related projects.
And check out this proposal from OpenCivics’ member, Monty Merlin, about his vision for ReFi DAO 2.0 - A Network Society to Regenerate the Earth
NGI Zero Commons Fund: Reclaim the public nature of the internet: The goal of this new fund is to help deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the whole technology spectrum, from libre silicon to middleware, from P2P infrastructure to convenient end user applications.
Maps
Bonfire: The Open Source Toolkit for Network Societies: Bonfire enables communities to build and manage their own federated digital spaces, emphasizing autonomy, safety, and meaningful interactions.
Knowledge Commons Design Requirements: An exploration of essential features and best practices for wikis aimed at supporting a living knowledge commons.
Civic Tech Field Guide: A comprehensive, crowdsourced global collection of projects leveraging technology for public good, serving as a resource hub for civic tech practitioners.
Playbook Structural Guidelines & Templates: A resource offering structural guidelines and templates to assist in the creation and organization of playbooks for collaborative projects.
Commons Market Makers: A presentation outlining strategies and roles for individuals and organizations acting as market makers within commons-based economic systems.
SuperBenefit Knowledge Garden: A living collection of shared understanding, research, and insights from the SuperBenefit community, contributing to the broader knowledge commons.
BlockGov Knowledge Base: An extensive archive of research papers, articles, and resources focused on blockchain governance, serving as a public good for researchers and practitioners.
Cursor Rules Framework: A guide detailing the implementation of a structured
.mdcrules system in Cursor to enhance AI assistance and project organization.
Courses
A Learning Journey for Organizing Bioregions: This course from the Design School For Regenerating Earth offers a transformative learning journey that explores how to cultivate regenerative, place-based governance and economic systems by aligning human communities with the ecological realities of their bioregions.
How To DAO Fundamentals: This foundational course demystifies Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), blending theory and practice to equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate and leverage this innovative organizational model.
Designing Resilient Regenerative Systems: An innovative Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) series that combines sustainability science, systemic design, and transformative action, providing participants with tools and networks to engage in systemic innovation of complex systems.
How SF Government Works: A civics class offering an in-depth understanding of San Francisco's political system, including its history, legislative processes, and practical guidance on engaging with local governance.
Technological Metamodernism Course Notes: A course exploring the intersection of technology, philosophy, design, and game theory, advocating for a nuanced approach that transcends the simplistic "tech good" versus "tech bad" dichotomy.
Initiatives
Open Protocol Library (OpenCivics Consortium Members Only)
Request a link in the Consortium Telegram to join.
Metagovernance Playground (OpenCivics Consortium Members Only)
Request a link in the Consortium Telegram to join.
Alliances
Interspecies Mutualism Reading Circle: A Telegram-based community dedicated to exploring and discussing interspecies mutualism, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on cooperative interactions between species.
Open Mutualism Archive: A repository of humanities research focused on mutualism within the context of open web values, emphasizing decentralization, peer production, and institutional disaffiliation.
📢 Member Spotlight
This month, we turn our spotlight to Andrea Farias, a researcher and designer dedicated to shaping digital tools and knowledge ecosystems that support the transition to a regenerative civilization. Andrea’s journey is one of deep transformation—shifting from the tech startup and corporate innovation world to bioregional organizing and digital sense-making.
As a recent OpenCivics Collaborative Research Round grantee, her work will soon be published in the upcoming Ethereum Localism book alongside leading thinkers like Michel Bauwens.
From Tech for Good to Systemic Regeneration
Andrea began her career in product innovation, working with startups and companies like Mozilla and Change.org. As the founder of Pivotally, a product discovery agency, she helped software companies understand their customers and conduct product experiments. Yet, despite working on projects intended to create positive social impact, she found herself confronting a hard truth: money dictated the priorities. No matter how well-intentioned a project, financial incentives often distorted its goals, leading her to question the very infrastructure she was contributing to.
Her realization? “It all comes down to money.” Every initiative, from public goods projects to digital health tools, was ultimately shaped by an economic model that prioritizes extraction over regeneration. This led her to explore alternative financial models, discovering regenerative economics and new ways of organizing collective intelligence that are not bound by profit-driven constraints.
Bioregional Organizing & Digital Sense-Making
Rather than abandoning technology, Andrea redirected her expertise toward bioregional organizing and collective intelligence systems. She is particularly focused on digital tools that support knowledge ecosystems, helping communities make sense of complex issues and coordinate solutions that align with Earth’s living systems. Her work explores two key areas:
Bioregional Organizing: Experimenting with community-driven institutions that redefine finance, governance, and decision-making in ways that directly support local ecosystems.
Sense-Making & Knowledge Commons: Designing digital infrastructures that foster collective intelligence, enabling communities to generate, share, and act upon knowledge in regenerative ways.
The Choiceless Choice: A Personal and Systemic Transition
Andrea’s transition wasn’t purely intellectual—it was deeply personal. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she suffered a debilitating back injury, a moment that forced her to confront the unsustainable pace of her own life. In her words, “I was extracting value from my own body without giving back, just as our economic system extracts from the Earth.” This realization made her shift inevitable; a “choiceless choice” when continuing on the same path was no longer an option. Letting go of her previous dreams of building a successful product consultancy, she stepped into the unknown, choosing to follow the work that felt most meaningful.
Weaving the Commons: What Comes Next?
Andrea’s work is now deeply embedded in the emerging knowledge commons movement, collaborating on open infrastructures that encourage cooperation rather than competition. As she and her peers experiment with new forms of digital and bioregional organizing, she sees an opportunity to create a decentralized, interwoven landscape of shared knowledge, resources, and governance models.
In her conversation with OpenCivics, Andrea expressed her excitement about breaking down silos and encouraging genuine collaboration: “A true knowledge commons isn’t about competition—it’s about designing tools that dissolve subconscious barriers and create collective intelligence.”
🔍 Network Updates
The OpenCivics Network is composed of organizing structures that connect and support members: the Consortium, Labs, and Foundation.
The OpenCivics Network is a community of practice and decentralized solidarity network of civic innovators, organizers, and patrons.
Key Updates:
Network membership will officially re-open next month after a transition to a new backend membership system.
Updated website to tell the story of our network and help share resources in the form of activities happening within the network. Please share your resources via the forms on the site or via Telegram to be included in these Monthly Reports and live on our website.
The OpenCivics Consortium is a coordination body of network citizens self-organizing around the creation of open civic systems.
Key Updates:
Open Protocol Library and MetaGovernance Initiatives launched.
Meetings will take place every other Tuesday at 9am and 5pm PST respectively.
A new constitution draft will be circulated this month for member review and feedback.
The OpenCivics Labs is an applied research and development cooperative offering networks facilitation and design.
Key Updates:
Supported A General Forum On Ethereum Localism with backend financial infrastructure and project management tooling.
Launched Collaboratory.Earth, an open innovation ecosystem for the bioregional movement.
Engaged with Indigenous Commons to propose an impact funding model based on indigenous principles.
The OpenCivics Foundation is a non-profit effort focused on enhancing civic participation by supporting the growth of the OpenCivics Network and the field of open civic innovation in the public interest.
Key Updates:
We’re excited to share that OpenCivics Labs DAO LLC has signed a fiscal hosting agreement with the Buckminster Fuller Institute to support the OpenCivics Network as we raise philanthropic funds to incorporate the OpenCivics Foundation and sustain our network stewardship.
As always, OpenCivics thrives through shared stewardship. Thank you for all that you contribute.
In Us We Trust,
OpenCivics Stewards